Chapter 55
Chapter Fifty-Five
Emmeline
The water was cold as Emmeline plunged into it. Not freezing as she expected for near winter, the undercurrent benefiting from the effects of nearby hot springs, but it shocked her senses and had goosebumps rising along her skin.
And she’d been right. Something about the freedom of it, about following Roremar over the ledge, felt like pure magic.
She surfaced, gulping down air as she spun in the water to find Roremar. Her hair clung to her skin, breath fanning in front of her when she exhaled.
Roremar treaded water a few feet away, his eyes sparkling. “All right, Huntress?”
“Better than.” Her skin was buzzing, magic pounding with excitement.
She swam toward a break in the rushing water, propping herself on the rocks forming a ledge between two curtains of falls.
The facade of the rocky cliffs was carved with caves, the waterfalls shadowing their depths and plants wrapping the space between.
The cliffs towered so high, they were entirely alone down here.
There was a light in Roremar’s eyes as he swam up to her, and it took her back to the night they’d swam in the ocean beyond his family home. When they’d been plagued by a mysterious killer and he’d been worried about providing for his family, but for a moment he’d let it all go and lived with her.
Roremar stopped between her legs with his hands on her knees. That spark of mischief made her wish they could stay like this for longer than tonight. Forsake the world and the Fates and be together.
“It’s odd that Rocarri told you now, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Roremar said. “I can’t figure out why. Especially given he’s still holding you hostage.”
Emmeline hummed in agreement. Rocarri hadn’t set them free. If anything, he’d only pressed harder on their wounds these past few days.
It didn’t add up.
“I’m sorry for not telling you,” she said, brushing his sopping hair back from his brow. “I wanted to, but I’ve felt trapped. Rocarri…he’s been messing with my head. Reminding me how much of a threat my magic poses. Made me wonder if I’m better off alone because of it.”
“I know you didn’t want to hide it.” Roremar sighed, muscles in his forearms flexing as he rubbed warmth into her thighs. “I’m not mad at you.”
“You seemed it on the ride out here.”
“Not at you,” he repeated, holding her stare. “And you’re wrong about your magic. It’s not a curse. They’re trying to make you believe that so it will be easier for them to control you.”
His certainty had her breath catching in her throat. Her eyes burned. Deep down, she’d known that, but hearing Roremar say it so plainly sparked a fire within her.
Emmeline didn’t think as she leaned forward and pressed a kiss to his cheek, an inch to the right of his lips, so close to breaking the boundary she’d set. His breath hitched, a sound more intimate than anything she’d heard from him.
When she pulled back, Roremar’s gaze was tracking down her body. Stopping where her silk chemise clung to her breasts, nipples pebbled from the cold. He looked ready to lean forward and taste her, but Emmeline knew her willpower wouldn’t survive that.
She cleared her throat. “Let’s find the Fates, Reckless.”
He shook his head as if to clear it, swimming around her and pushing up onto the ledge as Emmeline stood and wrung water from her hair. The stones around them darkened with the puddles sloughing off their skin, but the rock almost seemed to shimmer.
Choosing randomly, Emmeline peered behind the waterfall to their right.
“This one is shallow,” she called to Roremar as mist flecked her skin.
His shadow and scent surrounded her as he looked over her shoulder, the warmth welcome against her damp body, but the nearness didn’t scare her now.
Once, it was foreign. Then, it was forbidden. Tonight, she devoured it.
Roremar looked from the alcove to the ledge across it, caves dipping in and out of the rock. “Let’s use it to cross to the outcrop over there. One of these has to lead somewhere.”
They followed the predestined pathways as best they could, some carving stairs up and some dropping them back down so their feet were submerged in the water. As they walked, Emmeline counted the waterfalls rimming the crescent, and awareness buzzed through her.
“There’s twelve of them?” she asked, eyes flicking between the falls and the constellations above.
“Yes,” Roremar said, following her theory. “And Wisteria Falls is tied strongly to legends of the Fates.”
“It has to be one for each, right? Like the districts.”
“Safe guess.”
Emmeline tipped her head to the tallest, forcing her stare to focus past the water to the rock beneath, picking it apart. From this distance and with the force of the falls, it was hard to tell, but she thought she made out carvings in the stone. Jagged scratches, almost like—
“Lightning bolts,” she breathed, grasping Roremar’s arm at the symbol of the Fate of Storms and Peaceful Stretches.
Her mind spun, jumping from one waterfall to the next. All the way around the crescent, stopping at the twelfth. The water flowing from it was darker, maybe some sort of silt shadowing the reflection to a deep-purple hue.
Or a wine red.
“Dryvius,” she breathed.
“Come on,” Roremar said, voice hardening.
He stepped aside to allow Emmeline to climb up to the next ledge first. He kept a hand on her lower back, and while her heart pounded at the prospect of what they might find, she couldn’t stop herself from glancing over her shoulder, grinning when she found Roremar’s eyes tracking her body.
As if sensing her amusement, his gaze snapped up. He didn’t try to hide what he’d been doing, only smirking back.
“You can walk slower if you’d like,” he teased. Emmeline rolled her eyes, scampering across the ledge.
The cliffs were cut into an uneven set of steps leading up from the tenth to eleventh waterfalls, the rocks slick and moss squishing beneath her bare feet.
Carefully, they ducked behind the eleventh.
A cave stretched so far back, Emmeline couldn’t see where it ended, but she kept going, climbing toward that wine-red fall.
The final ledge was taller, and Emmeline had to pull herself up. Scrambling to her feet, she hurried onto the shallow walkway behind the twelfth waterfall.
And she froze.
“Roremar,” she said.
“Yes?” he asked, panting as he scaled the lip and stood behind her, his hand on her hip.
“Do you see that?” She nodded up, and Roremar followed her gaze. She knew the moment he saw the cave a head above them and what peeked out from within.
“How in a Fate’s starry-eyed fuck did those get here?” Roremar muttered.
Climbing the interior walls behind the purple-tinted water, vines looking like they were cleaved from the jungle above, were familiar pink flowers. Large, floppy petals the size of her hand striking a cord of fear and curiosity in Emmeline.
“I don’t know,” she said, but she was already finding hand and footholds in the rocks, being extra careful where they were slippery. She scaled the cliff face and pulled herself into the cave, bracing her magic for the familiar scent that would try to drag her to unconsciousness.
These were the same flowers Dryvius used at the murder scenes. The ones he burned in his rituals.
Emmeline brushed her fingers over the velvet petals as Roremar asked, “Feeling okay?”
She nodded, though the fog was already pushing at the edges of her mind. She wandered deeper into the cave, Roremar’s careful gaze burning into her. “I’d have thought these flowers would be in Anphrosia’s section of the falls since they affect her Fate ties.”
“It seems she and Dryvius are more entwined than any of us thought.” Roremar’s words made Emmeline pause. “What?”
“Nothing.” His statement nagged at some prior consideration, something the Fates had once said or she’d read, but she couldn’t recall it right now with the haze pulling at her. She shook her head.
The flowers extended across one side of the wall. Vines cut between them, other variants and colors of flowers speckling the assortment. Rich hues curved around the pinks, the tips of the large petals dyed deep wine reds and purples, fading to starry hearts.
Emmeline wasn’t sure what possessed her, but she brushed a hand over the glimmering center point. Silver dusted her fingertips.
Her gaze dropped to the floor, her and Roremar’s wet footsteps shining as if carved from the skies themselves. Like the water was kissed with Fate magic, even here.
“The starlight doesn’t reach in here, though,” Emmeline thought aloud.
“Huntress?” Roremar asked.
But she couldn’t answer. The haze wrapped tighter around her mind. Her heartbeat pounded in her ears, whistling with the calls of the Fates. The silver streaking her fingertips tingled, and the floral fragrance strengthened.
It wasn’t like before—in the Storytellers’ Lair or the caves beneath Roremar’s home—when the scent lured her to unconsciousness.
This was…power. This was the magic of her Fate ties igniting.
And she gave in to the call.
“Welcome back,” a giggling voice said as Emmeline blinked awake in her reading. She was back in her leathers, standing on the twilit plane that looked as real as Ambrisk.
“Serchus,” she greeted as the Fate swung upside down from his tree branch, silver leaves swaying in the breeze and his mask tight to his face. She wondered briefly if he ever removed it. “Why is it you? I assumed it would be Anphrosia.”
“Alas.” Serchus sighed, feet wiggling as he swung. “She is otherwise engaged. You are stuck with me, Reignarria. But have no concern, for I am as wound in this web as the fated pair you seek. We all are.”
Emmeline centered herself, trying to unpack those words. The Fates had a reason for everything, even when it didn’t seem like it. If Serchus was here now, answering this call, he was specifically selected.
And Serchus was connected to this somehow. His reading had been the clearest recently. He’d been the one to tell her of the lock and key.
“The tale you spoke of last time. Was it about Roremar and Dryvius?”